Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!

Friday, July 31, 2009

It's hard to tell from the picture, probably taken from a cellphone, but the image is said to depict one of the vehicles in President Obama's Secret Service motorcade with windows open and guns drawn. Gateway Pundit shares a letter from a demonstrator:

During the motorcade when the president was arriving, there were several vehicles following the limo that contained the secret service. All of the vehicles had all the windows rolled down, and back hatch open on the SUVs with the men holding their, I assume assault rifes, machine guns, drawn on everyone lining the streets. Needless to say it took my breath away at the sight of them, and made my friends and I dizzy with fear. I have seen the secret service before, but never like this. While they were intimidating, I never felt in danger. The guns were not drawn when the motorcade was leaving the event. But I turned on a local talk radio program as we were leaving and all the calls were about witnessing the guns being pointed at them and nothing else until the end of the program.

The reader asked if "this was normal"?

To which Gateway Pundit responds, "It's not normal for the secret service to pull their assault guns on conservative protesters as they drive through town."

Well, it's pretty clear that the administration's not tolerating a lot of dissent.

Here's Betsy Newmark, in response to The Politico's article on the cancellation of town hall meetings by Democratic congessional members:

Gee, the American people are fed up and they don't want to take it anymore. Instead of looking at the level of anger and readjusting their behavior, the tendency of these congressmen is to dismiss the protesters and cancel the meetings. While I don't approve of a mob blocking a speaker's right to speak, these groups represent a real anger that their representatives would do well to address. These elites may have found all the "tea bagging" jokes amusing when the Tea Party protests were held earlier this year, but the numbers and intensity involved have not dissipated. People are angry and they're taking advantage of their access to their representatives to make that emotion felt. They would do better meet with members of the protesters and answer their questions than to simply decide to shut down their meetings. That would be treating the symptom rather than the cause.

It was a media cage fight, televised every weeknight at 8 p.m. But the match was halted when the blood started to spray executives in the high-priced seats.

For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.

It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to bring it to an end.

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the two networks. Then, even though the feud had increased the viewing audience of both programs, they instructed lieutenants to arrange a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).

“It was time to grow up,” a senior employee of one of the companies said.

The rapprochement — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.

“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”

The parent companies declined to comment directly on the details of the cease-fire, which was led by Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, and Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president who oversees corporate affairs at the News Corporation.

Mr. Olbermann, who is on vacation, said by e-mail message, “I am party to no deal,” adding that he would not have been included in any conversations between G.E. and the News Corporation. Fox News said it would not comment.

I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing.

Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?

In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful. Do they understand that the others are also human beings with feelings? Especially when they think nobody is looking.

U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd has been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer.

Dodd is scheduled to undergo surgery during the Senate's August recess and said he expects to be back at work after a "brief recuperation" at home.

"It's something that's very common among men my age,'' said Dodd, who is 65 and the father of two young daughters. "In fact, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during their life.''

Dodd, a Democrat, said he feels fine and intends to run for re-election in November 2010. "As you have probably noticed, I'm working some long and hard hours lately,'' he said. "And that will continue."

In a world in which the conversation on race has traditionally taken a back seat to both logic and reason, it’s no wonder that yesterday’s so-called “Beer Summit” at the White House seemed to make little sense at all. It wasn’t because the President was wrong in offering up a few cold ones to my father, Henry Louis Gates, and the now infamous Sergeant James Crowley in an attempt to tame the media blitz around my father’s arrest—it was because like most issues that make their way to TMZ, the reference point had shifted. The debate over Red Stripe and Blue Moon had somehow overshadowed the fact that this story began with a black Harvard professor and a white cop from Natick, Mass—and as CNN’s countdown clock to the event taunted viewers like a time bomb, it was clear that this day wasn’t going to be the beginning of a serious discussion on human relations but rather a circus-like ending of a misunderstanding between a couple of very decent men.

I can’t say that I was shocked.

As our family rounded the corner to the White House library and I first caught sight of Sergeant Crowley’s lovely 14-year old daughter—who was wearing an appropriately heavy and charmingly untrained amount of green eyeliner on her lower lashes—we were instantly transported from the post-racial myth of America in 2008 to the reality of 2009. There they stood, a pleasant family of five, listening patiently to the overzealous tour guide boast about the fully functioning fireplace to the left of the doorframe.

The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco.

The NEA was given $80 million of the government's $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide, and most of the money is being spent to help preserve jobs in museums, orchestras, theaters and dance troupes that have been hit hard by the recession.

But some of the NEA's grants are spicing up more than the economy. A few of their more risque choices have some taxpayer advocates hot under the collar, including a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, "the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla."

"When you spend so much money in a short amount of time ... you're going to have nonsense like this, and that's why the stimulus should never have been done in the first place," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste.

Click here for a full list of all of the NEA's Recovery Act grants.

Williams said such support for the arts is a luxury at a time when the president and Congress have been telling the public to make sacrifices to manage the recession.

"When taxpayers see this, they realize that's just a bunch of hot air," he told FOXNews.com.

Some members of Congress raised alarms as the stimulus bill was being drafted and approved, but President Obama, while admitting there were problems with the $787 billion legislation, stressed the need for immediate action to resuscitate the economy.

"We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary," Obama said at the time.

But he presumably didn't intend to have stimulus money help fund the weekly production of "Perverts Put Out" at San Francisco's CounterPULSE, whose "long-running pansexual performance series" invites guests to "join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun."

Protesters swarmed Tehran's main cemetery and fanned out across a large swath of the capital Thursday, defying truncheons and tear gas to publicly mourn those killed during weeks of unrest, including a young woman whose death shocked people around the world.

The protests marked the 40th day since the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan was captured on video and posted on the Internet. For Shiite Muslims, the 40th day has religious importance, often an occasion for an outpouring of emotion and grief.

Thirty years ago, such commemorations helped build momentum for the Islamic Revolution, which overthrew the shah. The resilience of the thousands of protesters this time set the stage for more clashes next week, when hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be inaugurated for a second term despite allegations that he won only because of widespread fraud in the June 12 election.

The scale and reach of Thursday's protests, which also erupted in at least four other cities, appeared to catch security forces off guard. After initially bloodying some of the mourners arriving at Behesht Zahra cemetery, many of them young women dressed in black and carrying roses, officers stepped back. They mingled amicably with protesters, and in one case even accepted flowers from them.

The mourners chanted political slogans as they rode the Tehran subway from the city center to the cemetery and back. When they returned to the center, they took to the streets, first in the area of the Grand Mosala Mosque, where they had been banned from gathering.

Later, on side streets and main thoroughfares, they were occasionally attacked by baton-wielding security personnel, some on motorcycles.

But they were also cheered on by thousands of well-wishers honking car horns ferociously or hanging out the windows of apartments and buses. They clogged roadways and tunnels, holding up signs in support of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Shopkeepers handed out bottles of water to sustain the demonstrators in the heat.

"Honorable Iranians," the protesters chanted. "Today is a day of mourning."

A national furor over race relations paused Thursday as President Barack Obama, in a shady spot on the White House lawn near the Rose Garden, sat down for beers with a black Harvard professor and the white police officer who arrested him two weeks ago.

For the two men who raised mugs of beer with the president -- both of whom wore suits and ties and sat stiffly in what was meant to be a casual moment -- the discussion of race and policing will go on.

The arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police, said afterward that he had already discussed racial issues with the professor, African-American studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., and that the two had set plans to talk further.

But for Obama, the most anticipated happy hour in recent memory may be little more than a timeout in a debate over racial profiling and other racially charged issues.

Obama helped escalate the national debate by saying the Cambridge police had "acted stupidly" in arresting the black professor on disorderly conduct charges at the scholar's home.

Charges against Gates were later dropped, but whether Gates had been arrested July 16 because he was black has since spawned a national debate.

Obama has tried gradually over the past week to ease the controversy, most notably by saying he regretted his choice of words and setting up what became known as a "beer summit."

The get-together Thursday had been described by the White House as a "teachable moment."

A small group of camera people and reporters was permitted to witness the meeting only for about 30 seconds and from about 50 feet away, showing Obama, in shirt sleeves, seated at an oval able with the now-famous adversaries.

Gates and Crowley appeared to talk seriously, and at one point, Obama laughed heartily.

Joining the three was Vice President Joe Biden, also in shirt sleeves.

Crowley said later that no apologies were exchanged between him and Gates. The police sergeant called the discussion Thursday "cordial and productive" but declined to offer specifics.

Gates struck a calming tone in a statement to the Web site The Root.

"The national conversation over the past week about my arrest has been rowdy, not to say tumultuous and unruly," he said. "But ... there's reason to hope that many people have emerged with greater sympathy for the daily perils of policing, on the one hand, and for the genuine fears about racial profiling, on the other hand."

Thursday, July 30, 2009

President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated “beer summit” with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge police Sgt. Jim Crowley was reduced Thursday for viewers at home to two minutes of shaky, silent video of the men gathered around a table in the Rose Garden.

Obama followed through on his promise to bring to the men together at the White House – and suggested he saw seeds of progress for the future.

“Even before we sat down for the beer, I learned that the two gentlemen spent some time together listening to one another, which is a testament to them,” Obama said in a statement after the meeting. “I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.”

After the event, Crowley characterized the discussion as “two gentlemen who agreed to disagree on a particular issue. We didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the past. We spent a lot of time discussing the future.”

Crowley also said he and Gates had agreed to meet again – but not for a beer the next time, “maybe an Kool-Aid or an iced tea,” he joked. He also said he first talked to Gates earlier in the day when their two families were taking separate tours of the White House and ran into each other, then finished the tour together.

He called the day “an effort not just to move the city of Cambridge or two individuals past this event, but the whole country beyond this and toward some meaningful discussion in the future.”

Still, the portion of the event aired on TV had an anti-climatic feel, and in many ways was exactly what Obama had said it would be earlier – the men sitting around having a drink. One surprise was the addition of Vice President Joe Biden.

Analysts of race relations said the benefits of the White House encounter were murky, at best.

The President and Vice President spent much of the time we were out there snacking on the peanuts and pretzels on the table. In frosty mugs, the four men had their beers of choice. For the president it was Bud Light, a beer company once headquartered in swing state Missouri now owned by a Belgian conglomerate.)Vice President Biden, who doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages, had a non-alcoholic Buckler, brewed by Dutch Heineken. Crowley had a Blue Moon Ale, brewed by Toronto, Canada’s Molson Coors Brewing Company. Gates opted for a Sam Adams Light – the only truly American beer in the lot.

The CBS News report at the video is pretty skeptical that tonight's quaffing is going to lead to a lessening of racial tensions going forward. See also, "What a White House Beer Says About Race and Politics" (via Memeorandum).I'm going to be reading up on this story throughout the night. I'm preparing an essay on the whole thing for Pamjamas Media, so I'll update if I find anything really juicy.

My previous collection of Pajamas articles is here. You know, I do actually write about things besides Erin Andrews!

Zorn says he wishes Vick the best and is sure the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback will return to the NFL.

The Redskins join a long list of teams — including the New York Giants, Jets and Dallas Cowboys — that have said they don't want Vick after he served 18 months in federal prison for running a dogfighting ring.

How does that sound to folks? Vick did two years in federal peniteniary. Doesn't the guy deserve a shot at returning to sports?

Michael Vick is going to get a second chance. Like almost all the 408 other NFL players who have been arrested on felony charges since 2000, the league is granting him the opportunity to return to stardom — despite committing crimes relating to gambling (Vick insists he never bet on the dog fights) that some believe should have disqualified him from ever lacing up a pair of spikes again. At one time, prosecutors were discussing the possibility of bringing charges under the organized crime statute known as RICO — a turn of events that would have meant the end of his career since he would have been sentenced to at least 25 years. In that way, Vick dodged a bullet, as he did when several similar state charges against him were plea bargained down to three years probation.

None of us are granted the insight to look into a man’s soul and discover if he truly is remorseful and willing to change his ways. All we can do is judge someone based on our ability to interpret a person’s attitude toward their transgression and how they carry themselves from that point on.

Michael Vick appears to have made many of the right moves. He has paid his debt to society and given more than a million dollars to fund the care and rehabilitation of some of the dogs he so barbarically used. He has even agreed to Commissioner Roger Goodell’s suggestion that former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy “mentor” the 29-year-old man to make sure he makes the right “decisions.”

But despite our longing to welcome back tarnished heroes with open arms, Vick’s crimes may be a bridge too far for the very image-conscious NFL. Despite Goodell’s conditional reinstatement of Vick, there has been very little interest shown by the 29 NFL teams in signing him, with many completely ruling out the possibility. It seems that there are indeed some things that are unforgivable — or, at least in the NFL, unmarketable.

My sense is that Vick's talents are what will make or break a comeback. A team needing at elite QB may not be too worried about image-consciousness. As long as the league's going to let Vick play, he should at least get a chance to compete for both attention and success.

It has not been a good couple of weeks for Tampa porn queen Stormy Daniels, who recently made news by announcing that she may run for the U.S. Senate. Daniels found herself slapped with a domestic violence charge, while her political adviser reported an apparent car bombing.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was arrested Saturday on a battery charge after she allegedly hit her husband during a fight over laundry and unpaid bills.

Two days earlier, her political adviser in Louisana, Brian Welsh, said his 1996 Audi may have been blown up outside his apartment in an upscale area of New Orleans.

"It's something out of The Sopranos," said Edward E. Chervenak, a professor of politics at the University of New Orleans. "Very weird."

In May, Daniels announced she was considering a run in 2010 for the U.S. Senate seat held by Louisana Republican David Vitter, whose family-values stance took a major hit in 2007 when his name was linked to a Washington prostitution ring.

Daniels was arrested Saturday afternoon after her husband, Michael Mosny, reported that Daniels struck him several times, according to a Tampa Police Department report.

Mosny told police that his wife was upset "about the way the clothes had been done" and then "got more upset about some bills that had not been paid," according to the report.

The report went on to say that Daniels "threw a potted plant at the kitchen sink," hit Mosny on the head several times and "threw their wedding album onto the floor and knocked candles off coffee table, breaking them."

Earlier in the week, her political adviser's car exploded in New Orleans while he and his wife were walking their dog nearby.

The quoted section is from Michael Massing, speaking of Glenn Greenwald, at the New York Review, "The News About the Internet. He talks about the bloggers he's found while researching the article, and he notes that the blogosphere's online commentators aggressively reject the newspaper industry's goal of objectivity. Here he discusses Greenwald:

The bloggers I have been reading reject such reflexive attempts at "balance," and it's their willingness to dispense with such conventions that makes the blogosphere a lively and bracing place. This is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Glenn Greenwald. A lawyer and former litigator, Greenwald is a relative newcomer to blogging, having begun only in December 2005, but as Eric Boehlert notes in his well-researched but somewhat breathless Bloggers on the Bus, within six months of his debut he "had ascended to an unofficial leadership position within the blogosphere." In contrast to the short, punchy posts favored by most bloggers, Greenwald offers a single daily essay of two thousand to three thousand words. In each, he draws on extensive research, amasses a daunting array of facts, and, as Boehlert puts it, builds his case "much like an attorney does."

Greenwald initially made his mark with fierce attacks on the Bush administration's policy of warrantless surveillance, and he continues to comment on the subject with great fury. Other recent targets have included Goldman Sachs (for its influence in the Obama administration), Jeffrey Rosen (for his dismissive New Republic piece on Sonia Sotomayor), Jeffrey Goldberg (for his attacks on the Times 's Roger Cohen), the Washington Post Op-Ed page (for the many neoconservatives in residence), and the national press in general (for its insistence on using euphemisms for the word "torture"). In June he wrote:

The steadfast, ongoing refusal of our leading media institutions to refer to what the Bush administration did as "torture"—even in the face of more than 100 detainee deaths; the use of that term by a leading Bush official to describe what was done at Guantánamo; and the fact that media outlets frequently use the word "torture" to describe the exact same methods when used by other countries—reveals much about how the modern journalist thinks.

For the press, Greenwald added, "there are two sides and only two sides to every 'debate'—the Beltway Democratic establishment and the Beltway Republican establishment."

In so vigilantly watching over the press, Greenwald has performed an invaluable service. But his posts have a downside. Absorbing the full force of his arguments and dutifully following his corroborating links, I felt myself drawn into an ideological wind tunnel, with the relentless gusts of opinion and analysis gradually wearing me down. After reading his harsh denunciations of Obama's decision not to release the latest batch of torture photos, I began to lose sight of the persuasive arguments that other commentators have made in support of the President's position. As well-argued and provocative as I found many of Greenwald's postings, they often seem oblivious to the practical considerations policymakers must contend with.

That's interesting.

And keep in mind, except a brief mention of Drudge Report, Massing does not discuss the many conservative bloggers who have broken huge stories ahead of the press. Recall that Power Line and a number of top conservative blogs provided most of the reporting that led to Dan Rather's resignation as anchor at CBS evening news.

But Massing has a point about the "wind-tunneling," although I think it's better to have it than not. The mainstream press is not going to cover the tough stories with the same no-holds-barred aggressiveness. It's up to readers to sift through the baloney and make up their own minds.

Barack Obama’s approval ratings have suffered major declines. The president’s overall job approval number fell from 61% in mid-June to 54% currently. His approval ratings for handling the economy and the federal budget deficit have also fallen sharply, tumbling to 38% and 32%, respectively. Majorities now say they disapprove of the way the president is handling these two issues. The new poll also finds significant declines over the last few months in the percentage of Americans giving Obama high marks for dealing with health care, foreign policy and tax policy.

Three factors have likely contributed to more negative views of Obama. First, criticisms of the government’s economic policies are mounting. For the first time since Obama took office, as many say the government is on the wrong track (48%) as on the right track (46%) in handling the nation’s economic problems. In May, 53% said the government was on the right track on the economy, while 39% said it was on the wrong track.

Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted July 22-26 among 1,506 adults reached on landlines and cell phones, finds that many of the health care proposals being debated in Congress are sparking negative reactions, especially from those following the debate most closely. By a 44% to 38% margin, more Americans generally oppose than favor the health care proposals now before Congress. Opposition rises to 56% among people who say they have heard a lot about legislation to overhaul the health care system. Concerns about the costs and increased government involvement in the health care system are volunteered most often by Americans critical of the health care proposals.

Thirdly, Obama’s comments on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. appear to have played some role in his ratings decline. News about the arrest of the prominent African American Harvard professor at his Cambridge home was widely followed by the public and 79% are aware of Obama’s comments on the incident. Analysis of the poll data found that the president’s approval ratings fell among non-Hispanic whites over the course of the interviewing period as the focus of the Gates story shifted from details about the incident to Obama’s remarks about the incident. Interviews Wednesday and Thursday of last week found 53% of whites approving of Obama’s job performance. This slipped to 46% among whites interviewed Friday through Sunday as the Gates story played out across the nation.

Terisa and Scott have been together for 12 years, and live in a lakeside neighborhood of Seattle, where they share a vegetable garden and three dogs. For 10 years, Terisa has also been dating Larry, who on the side is dating Vera, who is married to Matt. Now Terisa is dating Matt, too. It’s like a real life Big Love, without the Mormonism: they’re “polyamorists”—a term used to describe people who believe in loving, consensual, multi-partner relationships. And while it’s easy to brush off anything with the word “poly” as some kind of frat-house fantasy gone wild, polyamory has a decidedly feminist bent.

The key to poly relationships is gender equality, and women have been central to the creation of the practice. The word "polyamory" itself was coined by two women, in the early ’90s, and the first five books on the topic were all female-authored. Over the past year, writers like Jenny Block and Tristan Taormino, the sex columnist, have written on the topic, while celebrities Tilda Swinton (who called herself a “freak” in an interview with Double X) and Carla Bruni, the first lady of France, have spoken out in favor of open relationships. “Multiple-partner relationships have always gone on, but they have rarely had the gender equity characteristic of poly relationships,” says sociologist Elisabeth Sheff, one of the few researchers to study polyamory.

I'm struck by how casually acceptable this all sounds.

As much as I've blogged on gay marriage, it's astonishing to read how the culture is developing on the radical left.

Support for President Barack Obama's health-care effort has declined over the past five weeks, particularly among those who already have insurance, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found, amid prolonged debate over costs and quality of care.

In mid-June, respondents were evenly divided when asked whether they thought Mr. Obama's health plan was a good or bad idea. In the new poll, conducted July 24-27, 42% called it a bad idea while 36% said it was a good idea.

Among those with private insurance, the proportion calling the plan a bad idea rose to 47% from 37%.

Declining popularity of the health-care overhaul reflects rising anxiety over the federal budget deficit and congressional debate over the most contentious aspects of the legislation, including how to pay for it. The poll also shows concern over the role of government in determining personal medical decisions.

* E.D. Kain piles on at the Yockey post: "I think many social conservatives operate from a truly honest platform – from a moral foundation that is simply hard to change or evolve. But others really do operate from a position of power alone – out of “greed and lust” for power ..."

* Dan Riehl commented again yesterday, "It doesn't really impact, or even have much to do with me in any event ..." And, Dan updated with this, "This is a guy we really don't need in the right blogosphere. He appears to be as troubled as he is troubling to deal with ..." (link).

* Stogie from Saber Point, in the comments at an earlier post, adds this: "You were wrong to post that first article about Erin Andrews and you got called on the carpet for it, and justifiably so. We all make mistakes, we are all human. Learn from it and go on ... The angry, defensive, circle-the-wagons Donald is not the Donald that I know. I hope you can get control of this situation before any more damage is created."

**********The blogging reaction to my series on the Erin Andrews controversy has gotten personal and nasty, and some are now insinuating legal action. But frankly, I did not elicit the latest iterations in the backlash. Folks might want to think before they attack others. They also might take responsibility for actions they've taken of their own accord. This post is to set the record straight. I wish I didn't have to write it. But the Internet cops couldn't accept my initial apologies nor could they leave things alone after that. Everyone has been glad-handing and backslapping at the expense of my reputation. Apparently no one bothered to think that it was really theirs on trial in the court of public opinion.

Well, it turns out, first, that Dan Riehl just won't let the issue die. He has by now mounted a full-blown personal jihad against me, the "Rule 5 community," and, well, the entire Internet. And let me be clear: Dan Riehl is now LYING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. Readers can attack my blogging ethics all they want, but one thing that's never been in doubt is my honesty. In return, we've witnessed the most dishonest, hypocritical scorn from Dan and the others, piled higher than a dung heap in an Indian village.

Not one of the attacks has specifically responded to my original comments on the criticisms. It's been all emotion and faux moral outrage. As I have said twice already, I make no apologies for writing an Erin Andrews Google-bomb entry. One analyst estimated that by the middle of last week nearly 5 billion searches had been launched for the nude video. It's likely that hundreds of millions of people have searched for Andrews nude. Ultimately, untold millions watched the clip. It is what it is. And recall, CBS News ran raw footage of Andrews on The Early Show (showing a second's-worth of bare back and breast). CBS later took down the video. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, Geraldo Rivera, and the Fox & Friends all showed nude clips of Erin Andrews. The New York Post ran two consecutive days of scandalous Erin Andrews reporting, including raw photographs of the peephole shot with only minor black-barring. And Shaun Phillips, an outside linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, requested a copy of the Andrews video on Twitter.

I have covered all of these developments at American Power. This is a national event, and a national scandal. Dan, Cassandra, Cynthia, and Joy have barely touched the issues of the national and mainstream media exploitation of Erin Andrews. It's understandable, of course. I'm sure none of them want to jeopardize a chance to appear on TV. Moral outrage can be selective that way.

Remember all the Erin Andrews stories are always prefaced with "creepy" or "disgusting" right before showing the peephole video shots. Folks can have their cake and eat it too.

So, I'm hoping that this will be my final response to critics. I will continue to report on the Andrews scandal because it's a huge national story of culture, ethics, gender, media, and sexual power. Frankly, it's an unbeatable combination of newsworthiness.

Now, one more time, I have no apologies for blogging Erin Andrews, although I regret labeling my initial post as a "Rule 5" entry. It was a hasty mistake, and I have already said I'm sorry for it. Yet, not one of my critics has responded to my argument laying out the case for a non-sacrificial self-interest. Instead, folks have attacked me personally and unfairly, and THEY'VE LIED about their own involvment in all this as well.

Dan Riehl has been the most voluminous in his moral grandstanding, and it keeps getting uglier. He wrote a personal attack on me and Robert Stacy McCain a couple of days ago, "Short Sighted Bloggers Busted In Cloakroom Circle Jerk." It's mostly ill-founded faux outrage and ad hominems, and as such didn't deserve a blog post in response from me at the time. Dan writes, for example:

... both Stacy McCain and Donald Douglas have crossed a line they should have never crossed by continuing to harangue a dear friend. That would be a blogging colleague of mine for years, Cassandra at Villainous Company, who, like me, has probably forgotten more about blogging than these two hand creme dreamers can seem to gather up in those shriveled little heads they seem so fond of stroking for one another to get themselves off so seemingly obsessively these days.

My good friend Dan Collins thinks I went to eleven today over Stacy and Donald. In point of fact, I reigned it in. I deflected my true anger and resentment into the meme about Cassandra and such, partly as it also gave me a chance to acknowledge some old and dear friends. And I didn't much care for seeing Cassandra's name being bandied about by two people who have all but lost any respect I ever had for them. Really, Dan, you don't have an issue with two fellows out here playing ping pong with a solid conservative woman's name on their blog? Well, that's another matter, but I certainly do. I don't' find them, or it funny at all. Why you said nothing of that troubles me a little, because I know you to be a decent sort. Won't these two adolescent morons ever buy a clue, or lighten up? They won't if they aren't told about it, that's for sure. So I told them about it in precisely the manner I chose to do it. Too bad. As for your take on it, that isn't really a big concern, or anything that impacts my friendship with you, I hope.

But this entire affair is greatly misunderstood, as it was by Donald at the start. My original group email on this had very little to do with him, or the video at all and everything to do with Stacy McCain and his game of rules. And that's my fault for not being as clear as I could, so allow me to set the record straight. It isn't Dan Collin's fault he is misunderstanding all this. It's mine.

The passage is worth quoting at length as it shows Dan Riehl's strange psychology and pure, unadulterated bullshit. The chivalry would be fine, if it wasn't so self-serving and wickedly dishonest.

The e-mail Dan Riehl refers to is one he sent out after I cc'd my initial Erin Andrews nude video post. But it is not true that the "original group email on this had very little to do with him." On the contrary, Dan's e-mail was explicitly a response to the Andrews controversy. Here is what Dan Riehl wrote by e-mail, cc'd to 30 or so bloggers:

Friends - and many of you are - but please exclude me from all this Rule whatever BS. We were ginning our site links and some modest traffic with such gimmicks with far more sophistication and class in 2004 ...

As for the video, I already posted on it when I saw the first email. You are either perpetuating a crime, or a scam.

From the get-go, Dan Riehl has been in the full-metal damage control mode. It's actually pretty sad. He is truly a sick man. Fudging at minimum, he's launched his own hypocritical crusade to "clean- up" the Internet. Note too Dan Riehl's comments in a follow up e-mail sent to me personally, in response to my mention of him at one of the early reports on Erin Andrews:

Correct your post ... I did not watch any clip. Ask if you're going to attribute something to me in the future.

These are Dan Riehl's own words, and I'm making them available for the record to rebut the scurrilous slander against me. Dan Riehl's strenuous efforts to defend Cassandra at Villainous Company provide a nice background to her series of lies and omissions in attacking me. Cassandra's morning entry is here: "My First and Last Rule 5 Post." She writes:

It’s a waste of time to attempt to refute someone who continually puts words in your mouth, or imputes to you positions which reflect neither your values nor your arguments. If you want a debate, read what I’ve written and tell me why I’m wrong. I always enjoy a good argument on the merits.

But calling me silly names (and the idea that I’m a radical feminist is just that - silly) isn’t a rational argument. Neither is ignoring what I've written in favor of what you would like your readers to think I said. People who use such tactics aren’t making an argument. They’re engaging in a pissing contest. The thing about pissing contests is that the participants tend to get wet.

Over the past few weeks I’ve written two posts about the Erin Andrews story. In neither of them did I contend that Donald Douglas is a bad person. I did not ask anyone to chastise him or cast him out of the conservative fold. I didn't try to gin up a flame war.

To be clear in response to Cassandra, I have not "put words in her mouth," nor have I imputed anything to her that she has not herself stated.

Cassandra actually sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago. I have not written a single post in response to her, and I've put up at most two or three substantive paragraphs on Cassandra. Everything I reported on Cassandra is true. But she's been fiery mad nevertheless, and has somehow tranformed the debate into "All About Cassandra." Here's the e-mail, "Jesus Christ, Donald":

I have not been reading all the crap you have been saying about me, but did you ever stop to think for one second that you might be harming a very worthwhile cause by saying something like that?

You seem to be going out of your way to prove that you will do anything, no matter who it hurts, to "win" (whatever you think that is).

I am really disappointed. If you understood even half of the good Valour IT has done, you would never have risked hurting them just to take a dig at me. Even wounded vets aren't off limits. I made a serious error in judgment with you. Despite our difference of opinion over this Erin Andrews thing, if someone had told me you would do something like this, I would have said they were crazy.

"I do know that Cassandra's not above hawking some skin in order to get the big blogs on board for promotion (i.e., images, but not of her, as far as I know). But readers will have to check with Cassandra for the details."

As for hawking skin, this is what Cassandra told me in an earlier e-mail, when she was soliciting help in promoting the Soldier's Angels veterans' fundraiser:

Any help you can provide will be most welcome, Donald. Typically (and please forgive my bad memory - it's been 3 years!) the minimum would be to sign up on the Soldier's Angels site for the Marine team ...

You may well get some new readers - it isn't all milblogs. Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin have been on the Marine team in the past. I will be trying to get some big bloggers on our side this year. That's always a challenge since I don't really keep up with who's who in the blogosphere.

I will tell you a funny story - you of all people will get a kick out of this. In 2006, we were really desperate to get some of the bigger bloggers on our side, but the other teams started before I was asked to take over and had a huge head start. So I came up with the idea of having the women on the Marine team flood Ace with adoring emails - we found photos of pinups, Victoria's secret lingerie photos, you name it. The racier the better. We photoshopped all sorts of nonsense on them:

"Ooooooh Ace ... you have no idea how *grateful* we'd be if you'd join the Marine team". It got pretty crazy, but eventually he joined the dark side. Anyway, this is not exactly a secret but I'd prefer if it didn't get out. I doubt he'd be embarrassed, but we kept it quiet since he was such a good sport about it :)

Why Cassandra felt she was at liberty to share this information is beyond me. But if she herself describes her own milblog flesh-peddling as descending to the "dark side," then she's really established a new home-run record for abject hypocrisy.

What disturbs me most is the argument that traffic is so important that it justifies pretty much any act. Over the past few months I've sat back and watched this argument percolate across the blogosphere in various forms: society is oversexed but sex sells; I'm not really sure this is such a great thing to do, but it boosts my traffic without much effort; blah blah blah.

Okay, now lets' wrap this up with what's happening with Little Miss Attila. In the same post I responded to Little Miss Attila's attack on my name, saying she didn't want me screwing up the Freakazoid franchise:

Change your name, Bud. Or use a nickname as a first name—one that doesn’t begin with a “D.”

How about “Frank”? Or “Goofball”? Or “Butch”?

Well, actually, I'm rather proud of my name - especially since it's my late-father's name, as I'm a junior. I responded to Little Miss Attila at the post. Little Miss Attila is Joy McCann, and I got an e-mail from her a couple of days ago:

I am sorry that you took seriously what I meant as a lighthearted joke about your name, and the allusion to Douglas Douglas of Freakazoid.

I am asking you to please remove your link to my husband's blog. I am at present under legal and personal threats from someone whose cult I was involved in at the ages of 13, 14, and 15, and publicizing personal information about me and my family members may help this person to find me and subject me to further harassment from him and his associates.

To be fair, that's a genuine apology, and I'd consider her request. But before you know it, I got this e-mail from Ace of Spades HQ, "Hey Dude":

I got a note from Little Miss Atilla (which I don't understand the
details of) saying that you're outing personal information about her
for reasons I can't really fathom.

Why are you doing this?

First of all, I'm not "outing personal information about her." Joy McCann's husband is John McCann, and he has his own Wikipedia entry, which links to his personal blog, "Write Enough." It's all public. No doubt anyone who's really looking to threaten Joy McCann can find the information without my help. But why send an appeal to Ace of Spades regarding an issue to which he is not involved? Joy McCann pulling some strings to get me to take down her husband's name? What a scandal!

Interestingly, after that, Joy McCann gets right back into the "Rule 5" action this morning with a post congratulating Dan Riehl for taking it "upon himself to school Donald and Stacy about their unseemly obsession with stat-meter size."
Also, I get the feeling that Cassandra has e-mailed her post this morning all around, hoping to clean up her blemished name. Robert Stacy McCain has this on it, "Nine Days in July: Nuclear Diplomacyin the Conservative Blogosphere."

By now it's clear that the backlash to my original Erin Andrews nude video post has spiraled out of control into an ugly monstrosity of self-serving dishonesty and deceit. And these folks are conservatives?

And the conclusions are really simple. The folks still standing with the honor and integrity are the "Rule 5" bloggers themselves. Cassandra, Dan Riehl, and Joy McCann opened up a can of worms, and boy the contents inside are really ugly.

What can we do next?

I think apologies all around are in order, and I'll go first: I am sorry that I sent the original Erin Andrews post by e-mail and got people involved in a news scandal to which the didn't want to be.

Folks can publish apologies and retractions at their own blogs, with the appropriate citations and links, and that ought to do it. As for my posts, they'll remain as a legal record of what has transpired. The e-mails I have cited go to disprove the allegations being made against me. This is all about setting the record straight and putting the focus back on the folks who got so damned ruffled in the first place.

I don't know if anyone will step back, look at themselves, and say this has gone too far. Can't we all just get along? I'm certain that I won't be speaking with a lot of people after this.

I do know that I've been honest throughout. It's regretful that people stoop this low in moral hypocrisy. So on that note, I'll just close with the King James Bible, Luke 6:37:

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven ...

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A Boston, Massachusetts, police officer who sent a mass e-mail in which he referred to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as "banana-eating" and a "bumbling jungle monkey" has been placed on administrative leave and faces losing his job.

Officer Justin Barrett, 36, who is also an active member of the National Guard, sent an e-mail to some fellow Guard members, as well as the Boston Globe, in which he vented his displeasure with a July 22 Globe column about Gates' controversial arrest.The columnist, Yvonne Abraham, supported Gates' actions, asking readers, "Would you stand for this kind of treatment, in your own home, by a police officer who by now clearly has no right to be there?"

In his e-mail, which was posted on a local Boston television station's Web site, Barrett declared that if he had "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent noncompliance."

Barrett used the "jungle monkey" phrase four times, three times referring to Gates and once referring to Abraham's writing as "jungle monkey gibberish."

He also declared he was "not a racist but I am prejudice [sic] towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they say is freedom but it is merely attention because you do not get enough of it in your little fear-dwelling circle of on-the-bandwagon followers."